Obama throws Rice at media, distracts reporters from White House silence on Egypt​

11/29/2012
Neil Munro

White House officials have reignited the post-Benghazi furor over a low-budget anti-Islam YouTube video just as President Barack Obamas signature Muslim-outreach strategy is facing a disastrous and humiliating collapse on global TV.

The Obama administration stepped up its rope-a-dope media tactic Nov. 27 and Nov. 28 when White House officials pushed U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice back out in front of the medias cameras.

That action drew the medias attention away from Egypt and towards Rice, a telegenic, African-American woman who now faces dramatic GOP criticism for her actions on Sept. 16, seven weeks before the 2012 election.

She visited five Sunday talk shows that day, claiming jihadis shocking destruction of two U.S. facilities at Benghazi, and the death of four Americans, were caused by Muslims angry over the video, which mocked the Muslim prophet Muhammad. (RELATED: Obama campaign team defends Susan Rice on Benghazi cover-up)

Her claim immediately redirected major media outlets collective attention away from Obamas Arab-region policies, which had allowed various jihadi groups to congregate in Libya and Egypt.

Without Rice as a distraction, the medias attention to Arab turmoil could have undermined Obamas campaign-trail reminders that he had ordered the successful killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

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Even the New York Times acknowledged the resulting shift in the medias focus

John Kerry gonna get in there an' straighten things out...Violent protests outside Cairo as protests spreadMar 2,`13 -- Violent protests erupted outside Egypt's capital on Saturday as activists accused police of using excessive force in two cities and running over protesters, including one who was crushed to death by an armored vehicle.

The violence in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura and the Suez Canal city of Port Said came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was in Cairo meeting with opposition figures. Some liberals and seculars are angry that Washington is urging them to take part in next month's parliamentary elections and see U.S. support for the vote as backing for President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood party. The U.S. Embassy invited 11 opposition figures to meet with Kerry, but five declined.

The U.S. State Department said Kerry had a telephone conversation with opposition figurehead and Nobel laureate Mohammed ElBaradei, who heads the opposition National Salvation Front. Kerry also met with Amr Moussa, a longtime diplomat and prominent figure in the group. Kerry was scheduled to meet with Morsi on Sunday. Protesters in Mansoura and Port Said have been calling for civil disobedience campaigns, or work stoppages, to bring down Morsi. The Interior Ministry, embattled by months of demonstrations aimed against its forces, called on political groups to reign in protesters in Mansoura who stormed the city's old police headquarters Saturday evening.

Protesters and opposition parties accuse Morsi and the Brotherhood of trying to monopolize power and of reneging on promises of reform. They also want parts of a new constitution amended and are calling for the formation of a more inclusive government. Calls for strikes coincide with a diesel crisis that has caused microbuses, taxi and truck drivers to wait in fuel lines for hours across Egypt. The political turmoil has rocked the country's economy and the government is struggling to contain declines in foreign reserves, which threatens to affect the country's ability to provide subsidies that millions of Egyptians rely on for survival.

Kerry: Divided Egypt needs political compromiseMar 2,`13 -- Egypt's bickering government and opposition need to overcome their differences to create "a sense of political and economic viability" if the country is to thrive as a democracy, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday.

He urged them to compromise for the good of the country. In meetings with Egypt's foreign minister and opposition politicians, some of whom plan to boycott upcoming parliamentary elections, Kerry said an agreement on economic reforms to seal a $4.8 billion International Monetary Fund loan package was critical. Closing the IMF deal also will unlock significant U.S. assistance promised by President Barack Obama last year. But Kerry's message to the liberal and secular opposition may have been blunted as only six of the 11 guests invited by the U.S. Embassy turned up to see the top American diplomat at a group meeting, and three of those six said they still intended to boycott the April polls, according to participants.

Undaunted, Kerry told reporters he had heard great passion from those who did attend and was convinced that they wanted to work in Egypt's best interests. But after meeting with Foreign Minister Kamel Amr, he acknowledged the difficulty in overcoming the deep differences. He said he would make that point to President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist from the Muslim Brotherhood, in their talks Sunday. "I say with both humility and with a great deal of respect that getting there requires a genuine give-and-take among Egypt's political leaders and civil society groups just as we are continuing to struggle with that in our own country," Kerry told reporters, in apparent reference to the current stalemate in Washington over the federal budget. `There must be a willingness on all sides to make meaningful compromises on the issues that matter most to all of the Egyptian people."

Kerry spoke by telephone with Mohammed ElBaradei, a Nobel peace laureate who heads the National Salvation Front, an opposition coalition calling for the election boycott. He also met privately with Amr Moussa, a former minister under ex-President Hosni Mubarak who's now aligned with the Salvation Front. Moussa, an ex-Arab League head, ran for president last summer. Neither ElBaradei nor Moussa attended the group meeting. The Salvation Front says now is not the time for elections that will further polarize the country while violent clashes continue between protesters and security forces, further shaking the faltering economy.

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